


Someday

by withaflashoflove



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 01:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13470654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withaflashoflove/pseuds/withaflashoflove
Summary: Barry finally gets out of prison and Iris brings him home.





	Someday

When the doors open and she can see him without the barrier of glass separating their bodies, she doesn’t run.

She doesn’t move.

She doesn’t even know if she breathes.

Her mind goes blank, her eyes fixate on him walking over to her, her hands freeze at her side. No fireworks explode in the distance. A soundtrack doesn’t play when he stands in front of her. If anything, the only sound she can make out is her dad’s laughter behind her. But even then, even with Barry smiling at her and Joe laughing, she can’t move.

It isn’t until the warmth engulfs her body, until there is lightning spinning around her that she finally exhales. He scoops her up in his arms, his nose rests on her neck, he lifts her feet off the ground, and still, she’s stuck in silence, stuck in a haze, a blur of light and warmth and sparks, but she can breathe again, can feel the touch of his skin on hers, can feel the stubble of his beard graze her cheek.

She knows she’s home.

* * *

 On the car ride back to their apartment, Iris doesn’t let go of his arm. They sit side-by-side in the backseat. Joe drives.

He asks Barry about prison and Barry tells him stories and they laugh. She feels eyes on her every now and again, she feels him caress her arm ever so often. Maybe he’s worried. Maybe she should say something, maybe she should look at him.

A part of her knows he’s only telling the good stories. There are details he leaves out because sometimes he stutters on his words and that's his way of concealing something he doesn't want to talk about. She’ll ask him about it later.

But Iris rests her head on his chest and wraps her arm around his waist and doesn’t say a word for the entire drive. She doesn’t let go of him either.

If she does that, they might take her away from him again, if she closes her eyes, he might disappear. So she nuzzles into his shirt and tightens her grip on him and stares out the window until they get home.

* * *

 “You slept on the couch again?” Barry whispers into her hair as they walk through the front door.

Six locks now.

Three from Barry, three from her dad.

An alarm system too.

A gun, in the drawer of the coffee table, just in case; another one in the bedroom, but that one’s too far and she hasn’t stepped foot inside of that room since they took Barry away.

The kitchen doesn’t need guns, it has enough knives in it, and Iris doesn’t tell anyone, but she’s been taking every self-defense class she can find, been going to the shooting range when she isn’t at work or surveilling the Devoes.

She won’t admit that she’s afraid.

She’ll say it isn’t fear. It’s just training. It’s practice. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

But in reality, her strength feels like it’ll crumble as fast as a bullet can leave its gun, and she’s running on empty because if anything’s left inside of her, she knows it might break.

Barry’s been looking at her, waiting for her to respond. His hands are cupping her jaw and he’s searching her eyes for something.

Talking is a lot.

Holding him is enough.

She leans up to kiss him, the first time she’s done so ever since the courtroom, when he froze time to tell her she couldn’t save him, when he froze time so he could let her touch him before it was too late. But she kisses him now, holds his lips between hers for seconds, minutes, hours.

They end up falling asleep on the couch. He’s wrapped around her and it’s too small to fit the both of them, but her body doesn’t shake. Running is the last thing on her mind.

She sleeps that night. Doesn’t wake up in panic either. Just falls asleep with him by her side somehow knowing he’ll be there when she wakes up. She knows he’ll be home.

* * *

 “You don’t like it, do you?”

“I don’t hate it.”

Barry kisses her forehead and then her nose and then her lips. His smile is infectious, and she’s well-rested, she’s at peace, so she smiles too.

“It’s scratchy.”

He rubs his nose against her and her whole body tingles. It probably has to do with the fact that his hands are tickling her sides and Iris finds herself pinned to the couch, tears falling out of her eyes because he’s tickling her and he’s laughing and he’s so pretty to look at, so nice to hold, and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him, she’s missed him, she loves him so, so much.

They took him away from her.

Everyone keeps taking him away from her.

Someday, she’ll get used to it.

Someday, she won’t sleep on the couch, she’ll put one foot in front of the other all the way to their bedroom, she’ll pull the sheets over her and curl up on his side of the bed until he can make it back and she can curl into him.

Someday, she won’t cry every night that he’s away from her, she won’t feel like the life she has to live without him is tiresome and tedious and meaningless.

 _Someday_ , she reminds herself.

Not now, though.

Now, she escapes from under him and pulls him up by the hand and she guides him to the restroom because while the beard doesn’t bother her, it’s not _her_ Barry, not yet at least, and more than anything, she craves the familiarity of the Barry she’s grown up with, the one who couldn’t grow a beard for years, the one who gave her puppy dog eyes every time she teased him about it, the one who’s held her hand through it all.

Right now, she wants a fresh start, wants to wash the smell of prison off him, wants to hold him and kiss him and stay in his arms till the end of time.

Right now, he came back to her, and she just wants to be home.


End file.
